The movie
It’s hard to talk about Birdy without making it sound ridiculous. The frame story takes place in a military mental hospital during the height of the Vietnam War; after a tour in Vietnam, the main character, Birdy (played by Matthew Modine) has had a mental breakdown and believes himself literally to be a bird, refusing to speak to anyone. In what will be probably one of the last times in his career, Nicolas Cage plays the (mostly) sane one, Birdy’s best friend, Al, also a damaged (albeit mostly physically) Vietnam vet who is asked by Birdy’s doctor to try and help Birdy break his delusion. The rest of the movie is told via flashbacks that trace Birdy and Al’s friendship from its beginnings until they go to Vietnam; the flashbacks also deal with Birdy’s obsession with flight and his strange, almost erotic desire to be a bird.
Birdy could have been a straightforward coming-of-age drama or satirical look at the main character’s obsession or even a disturbing portrait of what war does to young people. A lesser director could have chosen to make fun of Birdy’s obsession or would have made it clearer that the film was through Al’s lens. Alan Parker takes a different route, choosing instead to portray Birdy’s obsession and subsequent condition (and the consequences of the two) with a serious tone, with little humor or humiliation; frequently, Parker tries to visually represent what goes on in Birdy’s mind, to varying degrees of success. What we get is an incredibly interesting, occasionally slow film about friendship, loneliness, and birds.
The film starts out with Matthew Modine as Birdy staring out a high, mental hospital window, looking awfully bird-like, his legs perched and his body hunched over, with a voiceover of Nicolas Cage’s Alphonso yelling “Birdy!” It’s a very striking image, similar to a painting (no wonder it was used for some of the posters), one that we visit often in the film, and one that sets a very specific kind of ‘psychological drama’ mood, a mood that’s not super foregrounded during the first half of the movie. Despite this initial image, the first character we’re officially introduced to is Alphonso Columbato, a vet who’s being wheeled to a hospital room, his face covered in bandages looking a lot like the Invisible Man, or post-explosion Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight. Al then starts his journey by train to go see Birdy at the mental hospital in which he’s being institutionalized. From there, the movie starts one of its many flashbacks focused on Birdy and Al’s relationship from before their respective war injuries.
The parts of the film that take place pre-war are interesting in their dedication to a certain coming-of-age mood; many times, especially before the film starts delving into Birdy’s psychology, it can feel like you’re watching two completely different movies, one about two friends and their adventures in mid-60s Philadelphia, and the other about two deeply damaged men trying to confront their experiences in the war. For the most part, I think the coming of age parts work better, not least because they give Cage and Modine a chance to flex their juxtaposing charm in their portrayal of the relationship between Al and Birdy.
Al has Cage once again tapping the oafish, jockey part of himself, though with a bit more tenderness than in Racing with the Moon or Cotton Club. A high school wrestler and all-around goofy dude, Al befriends Birdy after physically assaulting him for stealing his younger brother’s watch (it was a misunderstanding). Birdy convinces Al to help capture pigeons so that they can train them to become messenger pigeons, and the two quickly become friends as they go around the city looking for pigeon enclaves under train stations or in warehouses. Their repeated antics, from donning feathered outfits to not scare the pigeons to staying up all night at a beach after repairing an old car to trying to build giant wings modeled after bird’s wings, are portrayed with an innocence and nostalgia akin to other contemporaneous coming-of-age movies, including the previously reviewed Racing with the Moon. There are a few darker moments in the flashbacks: after Birdy falls from the roof of a refinery building, his mother tears down his pigeon coop and sells his pigeons to the butcher; Al’s abusive dad reports the car Al and Birdy fixed up as stolen and the two spend a night in jail; in an attempt to get some cash, the two friends help a man collect stray dogs only to find out he was taking the dogs to a horse food factory.
In keeping with teen movies at the time, there’s a few sex scenes played for laughs, mostly by focusing on Birdy’s disinterest in human women: under a boardwalk Al and a girl have sex while Birdy tries to see how long he can hold his breath or Al goes on a rant trying to describe how great boobs are after Birdy says they’re “just mammary glands.” While funny, the scenes seem out of place and not in keeping with the serious tone of the rest of the parts that focus on Birdy and his strange tendencies; the film is able to keep away from making fun of him except when it comes to his sexual preferences, which can sometimes undermine the more psychologically complex portions of its portrayal of Birdy.
And what exactly is up with Birdy? We’re never given a straight answer – at first, his fascination with birds seems like it has to do with a fascination with flight. As the movie goes on, however, we’re given hints that his bird obsession is of a different nature. After getting two canaries, one of which he names Perta, Birdy transforms his room into an aviary and frequently allows the birds to fly around, occasionally speaking to them to inquire how they’re able to fly. Birdy becomes increasingly close to Perta in particular, and often grabs her to pet her or kiss her. Eventually, he strips his clothes completely and lies down to sleep in the aviary. In one of the stranger scenes, a superimposed monologue by Birdy details his dreams in which he becomes Perta, the scene ending with Birdy waking up from a wet dream. It’s hard to take the scene completely seriously – while this scene isn’t meant to be a joke on Birdy like the other scenes of his sexual inadequacy, it feels underdeveloped because his sexuality isn’t explored more seriously elsewhere. In a much more successful dream sequence, Birdy dreams he is Perta flying through Philadelphia; Parker portrays this using the then-new Skycam technology. In a way, it’s the scene Birdy has been building up to – while technically and visually very impressive, it falls sort of flat dramatically.
Birdy’s obsession with birds (and his desire to be a bird) is ultimately the explanation as to why, after being the lone survivor in a Vietnam helicopter crash, he believes himself to be a bird. In the face of the violent horror of war and the loneliness of being stranded, he reverts to the only time he felt completely comfortable – pretending to be a bird. Al is brought to the institution Birdy is kept at to try and snap Birdy out of it; much of the post-Vietnam scenes involve Al talking and yelling at Birdy with mostly no responses.
The scenes that deal with the war and that take place in the hospital are sort of a crapshoot. The novel Birdy is based on was originally set during World War II, and the transposing of the story to Vietnam doesn’t add much. Compared to other Vietnam movies of the time (many of which include Hollywood finally dealing with the horrors of the war), Birdy’s war scenes are pretty generic and unspecific. It’s not clear what specifically the anti-war film is anti about with regards to the Vietnam war. The treatment of the soldiers? Just general war violence? I’m not entirely sure why they had to change the setting of the film – it could have worked pretty much the same had it been set during the Second World War like the novel. Story-wise, the hospital scenes aren’t particularly interesting – they serve the purpose of transitioning between the different flashback sequences and the different weird scenes meant to portray Birdy’s mental instability.
Ultimately, the hospital scenes excel best at providing a space for Birdy and Al’s relationship to reconcile and for Modine and Cage to go all out for their performances. In a way that matches their respective characters’ different types of instability, both Modine and Cage go in entirely different directions with their acting. Modine goes entirely for interiority, quietness, his body constantly bent over; Cage externalizes everything. With half his face behind bandages, Cage lets it all out in yells, screams, and sobs; all of Al’s insecurities and pain can be heard in every word or sound. This is a Nicolas Cage performance.
The ending is weird, and I’m not sure if I really get it. After failing to get Birdy to talk time and time again, Al has an emotional breakdown and details in hurt sobs the existential crisis he’s gone through since the war. Birdy finally speaks to him (“Al, sometimes you’re so full of shit”) but when the military doctor comes, Birdy stops talking (when Al asks him why, he replies, “I didn’t have anything to say to him”) – the doctor doesn’t believe Al’s telling the truth (or thinks Al has lost it too), and Al starts lashing out. Al starts fighting the orderlies sent to get him out of the hospital, and he and Birdy escape onto the roof. As Al tries to keep the door shut, Birdy looks over the edge of the roof and decides to jump – in some ways, the logical conclusion to his obsession with flying and birds, and a bookend to his fall at the beginning of the film. Any other filmmaker would have ended the movie with Al’s shouts of “Birdy, no!” as we watch Birdy fall to his death. Not Parker — the tragic thematic closure is stopped short. Instead, we find out Birdy has just jumped onto a second roof. In response to Al’s shouts, all he says is, “What?” “La Bamba” starts playing. Credits roll. It’s weird. Watch it for yourself.
Is the movie good (regardless of Nicolas Cage)?
Birdy is a solid watch – it can be slow but you won’t find yourself bored very often. The parts that work in this film really work, and the parts that don’t work are weird enough to keep your interest. It’s hard to imagine it without Nic, though. Another actor probably would have gone for more realistic, less melodramatic acting, and that would have bogged down the film too much in its seriousness. Part of the film’s charms are in its quirks, and Nic has a lot of them. Besides, I don’t know how Modine’s performance would have fared without a bombastic foil to his quietness and tics.* I’d give it a 7.5/10, mostly because the war scenes don’t really do it for me.
*in general, I think when discussing great performances we tend not to give enough credit to the supporting performances that let it breathe.
Is Nicolas Cage good?
This is probably the meatiest role we’ve seen Nic in so far, and he fills it out pretty well. The differences between pre-war and post-war Al allow him to show his range, and he adeptly is able to go from cocky jock to wailing injured soldier without feeling like we’re looking at different characters. This is also one of the first roles Cage has really gone all in for – he apparently took out two of his teeth to play the injured Al, in addition to losing 15 pounds and refusing to take the bandages off for five weeks while filming. The sacrifice is worth it.
Is Nicolas Cage hot?
Pre-war Al gives Nic a chance to showcase his six pack and once again, and he looks pretty slick in his 60s Italian prep outfits. Post-war Al is less conventionally attractive, but he’s pretty sweet (a nurse falls in love with him) and could be considered hot if you’re into eternally damaged war vets.
Best Rage Cage moments
The final sobbing speech Al gives is both emotionally effective and incredibly entertaining to watch. Most of the hospital scenes include a few seconds of Cage yelling – overall a good flick for those of us who like to watch Cage angry.
Every Nicolas Cage Movie 